Discipline in current Tawjihi session a major achievement — gov’t

AMMAN — Holding Tawjihi exams with such a degree of discipline is a marked development compared to past years, Education Minister Mohammad Thneibat said Wednesday.

At a Cabinet session, Thneibat stressed that there has been “complete commitment” to General Secondary Education Certificate Examination regulations so far, noting that nobody complained against the leaking of test papers or chaos around schools.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour said government procedures to regulate the national exam, whose results decide students’ future in higher education, have contributed to regaining its good reputation, in addition to guaranteeing justice and equal opportunities among all students, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Thneibat said a main indicator of the degree of discipline is that the total number of students who have been banned from sitting for the exam during the first two days was only 114.

He noted that the figure constitutes less than 10 per cent of banned students in the previous two Tawjihi sessions, according to Petra.

A total of 127,834 students in both the academic and vocational streams have registered for the Tawjihi summer session, which started Monday and concludes on June 28.

Regular students account for 90,500 of the total, while the remaining 37,334 students are enrolled in the private study programme.

Some 35,900 students are registered in the scientific stream, 20,900 in the literary stream and 48,200 in the IT stream, while the rest are distributed in other streams.

Each examination day includes two sessions, with the first beginning at 11am and the second at 1:30pm.